Saturday, September 06, 2014

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Not this time: Islamic State militants want to fight Putin

Here's a slightly new geopolitical wrinkle. Earlier this week, the Islamic State issued a video challenging a powerful global leader. But this time, it was not President Obama or one of his counterparts in Europe. It was Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia is an old ally of the Assad regime and maintains its only remaining naval facility on the Mediterranean in the Syrian port of Tartus. In the initial stages of the Syrian conflict, Putin's government urged reconciliation and dialogue with the Assad regime, but rapprochement with the opposition never came to pass. Russia is Assad's primary source for military hardware.

The jihadists' reference to Chechnya and the Caucasus should not be a surprise. The Chechen insurgency has gone deep underground -- the worst of the open violence was more than a decade ago -- but Russia's heavy-handed rule over the North Caucasus has radicalized some in this Muslim-majority borderland. Fears of Caucasus-related terrorism haunted the buildup to this year's Winter Olympics in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.